What Happened To The Harbinger Movie?
It would be a pretty sweet life to have the psychic power to make anyone do what you wanted. Theoretically, I could become the most famous writer in the world, because I could make everyone hop onto this website and read all of my articles multiple times.
However, I would probably be too busy being an international lothario, with my wife’s “permission” of course, and I might not actually get any writing done. You take the good with the bad, am I right?
People with mind powers are a dime a dozen in comic books, but Valiant Entertainment’s Harbinger reboot was stellar when it happened, and it appeared Valient was making a movie out of it themselves.
All right, so it was really a resurrection of a previous attempt to adapt the comic for the theater, based on Jim Shooter’s original series run from 1992-95.
The licensing rights were with Paramount since 2008, but the project was in a permanent stall after all the lawsuit hoopla with Fox and Warner Bros. over Watchmen.
But then Valiant got the rights back, and they were going forward with the original plans. The original comic may have gotten everyone excited from the get-go, but our guess is that the reboot’s success, based in no small part on the deft storytelling of writer Joshua Dysart, was giving them more confidence in this being a solid title to develop.
Director Brett Ratner spearheaded the initial attempt, but for obvious reasons, he fell out of favor in Hollywood. Since then, the Harbinger movie has gone through a few different starts and stops.
Screenwriter Stephen Susco, who wrote Texas Chainsaw 3D and Paramount Insurge’s Vessel, commissioned the Harbinger script.
Then, from there, Harbinger fell behind in the Valiant comics movie line with Bloodshot hitting the big screen in 2020. That one starred Vin Diesel in the lead role. Problem there was that the movie was bad, bombed at the box office ($37 million on a $45 million budget) and so the Harbinger movie shifted from Sony to Paramount Pictures. That meant it was no longer part of the Valiant universe.
Paramount still seems interested in making the movie, at least in some respect. There seems to be some hope for the potential to launch an expansive universe featuring other Valiant characters like X-O Manowar and Shadowman if successful.
For those unaware, Harbinger is something of an anti-superhero tale, following Peter Stancheck. He is a teenager possessing vast psionic abilities, intent on bringing down Toyo Harada, the most powerful psionic on the planet. Plus he’s at odds with the Harbinger Foundation, the powerful organization that recruited him in the first place.
He forms a small team of ragtag individuals with similar powers to assist him, and their story is funny, exciting, and dips its toes into political and corporate intrigue.
Will we ever get the actual movie? Well, that remains to be seen.
